FIN
Boyang Hou

Reception: Saturday, July 11, 6-10pm
July 11 – August 2, 2015

Lease Agreement
3718 Ellerslie Ave
Baltimore, MD 21218

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Opening at the end of a socially and politically tumultuous spring, Boyang Hou’s FIN explores the space of uncertainty that exists when power balances become tenuous. Through sculpture, painting, and photography, Hou attempts to convey the atmosphere of uneasy titillation that precedes revolution - the eerie excitement that comes when it seems that change is fast approaching. Hou employs tropes of the cinematic to enact this drama that is at once ominous and hopeful: destruction with an eye to a brighter future.

Boyang Hou’s exhibition, FIN, is the final exhibition at Lease Agreement before it permanently closes.

Boyang Hou is an East Coast artist currently residing in Chicago. He serves as Director of Exhibitions at Fernwey Gallery and is a founding member of Dry Storage Collective. Hou received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BFA from New York University. Hou’s work often investigates the relationship between popular culture and ideas of aura, nostalgia, and the sublime. Employing devices such as lowbrow knowledge, play, humor, and cliché, he is interested in the ways in which culture and society can act as a conduit for liminal experiences. Using thematics such as fandom, cinema, and fetishized consumption he explores the possibilities of the contemporary.

Lease Agreement is a collaborative curatorial project by artists Adam Farcus and Allison Yasukawa. Set in the living room of the couple’s rental house, Lease Agreement continues in the tradition of apartment gallery exhibition spaces by exhibiting conceptually rigorous, engaging work within the context of a home.

This exhibition is hosted by Lease Agreement as a partnership with the artist residency, ACRE. ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is a volunteer-run non-profit based in Chicago devoted to employing various systems of support for emerging artists and to creating a generative community of cultural producers. ACRE investigates and institutes models designed to help artists develop, present, and discuss their practices by providing forums for idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects. More information about ACRE can be found at www.acreresidency.org.

Review: “A Fitting End” by Cara Ober. Bmoreart, August 12, 2015